Economy
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Social and affordable housing: Whacking a wicked problem
Australia’s housing crisis is caused by three factors: Supply, Supply and Supply. Supply of Land. Supply of Materials. Supply of Labour. Continue reading »
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Open access. Break the paywall. Reclaim knowledge now
In my academic career, I’ve always advocated for not-for-profit academic journals. These platforms support academic freedom and align with the principle that research should benefit society, not merely serve the interests of profit-driven corporations. Unfortunately, the academic publishing landscape, dominated by five major commercial players—Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, Springer Nature, and SAGE—has become a Continue reading »
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“Nothing like before” — China is out-competing the West on EVs
The West is accusing China of “overcapacity” to blame it for its own industrial demise. Continue reading »
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Best of 2024: Why do Chinese EVs meet so much resistance?
There was a time when the world looked to China to reduce its emissions. China was, they quite rightly pointed out, one of the globe’s worst polluters. Continue reading »
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Australian monopolies and iceless fokkers
He looked like a young, freshly sprouting Henry Kissinger, before complicity in war crimes began, and plagiarism became commonplace in allegedly relevant academic texts. The heavy-set flight attendant, his flabby covered jaw ever threatening to passengers, was apologetic, but firm in opinion. There would be no ice for anybody on this flight between the Queensland Continue reading »
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Best of 2024: Electric vehicles will crush fossil cars on price as lithium and battery prices fall
If it wasn’t already clear, the writing is now well and truly on the wall for the fossil car makers: Just a week after BYD launched its $US15,000 “Corolla killer” and with the world’s largest EV battery maker recently announcing it’s on track to cut battery costs in half this year, new research suggests the decline in Continue reading »
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Best of 2024: The Labor Party has lost its way
The Labor Party is a long way from done but at the moment it is mired in mediocrity. We need a Labor Party agenda in which the big issues are confronted, writes Bill Kelty. Continue reading »
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Reframing wealth: A stark disconnect between wealth and poverty
Australia is often celebrated as a wealthy nation, with a prosperity that is purportedly shared across its population. However, such assertions crumble under scrutiny. According to the 2021 census, 122,494 Australians were denied the basic right of shelter due to their inability to afford housing. This stark reality reveals the vast and growing chasm between Continue reading »
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Finding a fair and productive level of inequality: A review of Battlers and Billionaires by Andrew Leigh
When I met Andrew Leigh before his ‘Meet the Authors’ discussion of this new edition of his book, I had to ask him, ‘how on earth do you do this?’. Lyn Hatfield Dodds who moderated the discussion opened with the same question. Continue reading »
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Dutton’s Economic Cons: household electricity bills to rise by $665 a year under Coalition
Like Trump, Dutton likes to portray himself as a strong man. But appearances are not everything, and Dutton is pretty much an economic policy vacuum. Continue reading »
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Voters blame one man for rising energy bills while companies get away with gouging
If, as seems likely, Anthony Albanese and his government lose seats at next year’s federal election, one thing we can be certain of is that the nation’s economists and econocrats won’t be admitting to their not insignificant contribution to Labor’s setback. Continue reading »
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Sanction rebounds: The US will cripple its own economy
The Biden Administration is leaving Trump a time bomb. The US seems intent on trying to cripple China, but the effect is rebounding badly and will most likely cripple its own economy. Continue reading »
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Damned if you do: Jim Chalmers cops the blame for no recession
Government spending is keeping Australia out of recession, just as last week’s feeble GDP numbers tallied 7 consecutive quarters of negative growth. Michael Pascoe reports on the moaning business lobby. Continue reading »
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Trump’s economic delusions
Trump’s economic strategy is based on a series of delusions that will result in higher inflation, a bigger trade deficit and a loss in the value of the American dollar. How can that Make America Great Again? Continue reading »
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Chinese dance spectacular, Shen Yun faces allegations of child trafficking and abuse
As Shen Yun gears up for its annual multi-million-dollar tour of Australia, the U.S.-based Chinese dance group is facing a class action lawsuit for multiple counts of child trafficking, abusive practices and breaching a slew of U.S. labour laws. Continue reading »
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Options for global trade
Australia and the United States believe China is hegemonic. China uses a different approach to international engagement, and that means Australia fails to understand China’s appeal to the region and the global south. Continue reading »
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To avoid recession, cut interest rates next week
Interest rates settings depend on forecasts of price inflation, wages and unemployment. There is now sufficient evidence to suggest that the Reserve Bank should begin to cut interest rates soon and arguably at its December Board Meeting. The balance of risks if it stays there much longer is that the economy will fall into a Continue reading »
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Are you better off? If not, why not? Productivity, income distribution and the cost of living crisis
While lifting the rate of productivity growth is the obvious solution to the cost of living crisis, judging by the experience of most developed economies, it is not obvious how to restore productivity growth. Continue reading »
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Trump’s tariffs are a fool’s game
US President-elect Donald Trump’s protectionist trade policies — marked by high tariffs — have been a major economic setback for the United States. The costs of these policies have harmed domestic buyers and caused job losses in sectors related to the targeted industries. Rather than resolving the trade imbalance issue as Trump intended, his administration’s Continue reading »
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The Future Fund must be a fund for the future
Like all policy instruments, the Future Fund was created to manage the challenges the country was facing at the time. The government has every right and reason to adjust and adapt the mandate to manage very different political and economic challenges today. Continue reading »
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The rule of the Oligarchs and Machines is here
Ordinary humanity faces an emerging threat from the combined might of the Human Elites (billionaires and the military-political class) working with perhaps the greatest power the planet has ever seen: artificial intelligence. Their combined might has the potential to totally screw us. Happy New Year everyone. Continue reading »
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The AUKUS delusion just got worse
Much has been written in these pages about the AUKUS delusion: Of how it was haphazardly and secretly put together by Scott Morrison to wedge the then Labor Opposition, about the elasticity of its costings, the improbability of Australia ever acquiring any of the proposed submarines, the enormous cost of the project, the effectiveness of Continue reading »
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Google faces verdicts from anti-trust trials as Trump term approaches
Search behemoth Google is under pressure in the US after three anti-trust trials concluded, with one of the remedies proposed being a call for it to be forced to sell off its web browser, Chrome, an app that dominates the browser space. Continue reading »
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High impact submitters weigh up porn codes
At least one group of experts is asking why proposed online porn regulation lacks natural justice, damages sexual expression and promotes risky technology. Continue reading »
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What ails America – and how to fix it
America is a country of undoubted vast strengths—technological, economic, and cultural—yet its government is profoundly failing its own citizens and the world. Trump’s victory is very easy to understand. It was a vote against the status quo. Whether Trump will fix—or even attempt to fix—what really ails America remains to be seen. Continue reading »
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COP 29: grossly inadequate funding signals a deepening East–West divide
Developing countries at COP 29 presented the Western world with an annual US$1trillion financial transfer bill for the cost of their profligate carbon fuelled global warming inducing industrialisation. That sum was no NGO rule of thumb figure but one produced by an organisation funded by Western governments themselves – the International Energy Agency, the world’s Continue reading »
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Tragedy followed by farce in Future Fund dispute
When Marx wrote “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce” he might as well have been talking about the recent spat between former Treasurer Peter Costello and the Albanese Government Treasurer, Jim Chalmers. Continue reading »
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Promises and perils of the Future Made in Australia Act
Australia’s industrial policy is shifting significantly with the introduction of the Future Made in Australia Act, which aims to enhance local manufacturing and reduce reliance on commodity exports. But concerns have arisen regarding the potential inefficiencies of targeted investments and the risk of deepening regional disparities. Australia needs a broader and more balanced approach that Continue reading »
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In defence of public education
Over the last 10,000 years or so societies have evolved from relatively simple and loosely structured groups of people to the complex entities of the present nation-states (and even a nascent world society), but in this time period the human being, as an organism, has not changed significantly. So, what has changed? Continue reading »
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Time to take China and Latin America more seriously
The invitation said: ‘Global Multinational Corporations Summit.’ Main Topic: ‘An opening China and the World.’ Continue reading »
